Question Ryzen 9 5900x and RTX 4080 - - - Low GPU usage ?

Mar 2, 2023
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Hardware

Ryzen 9 5900x
RTX 4080
Corsair 32GB RAM
M.2 storage
Alienware monitor - 3440x1440
Corsair 750w PSU. It is an old one but still meets my GPU manufacturer minimum power recomendations.

Hey all.

I am having issues with alot of games and GPU usage being low.
Most of the time GPU usage is around 50 - 60% but my CPU usage is equally as low, which leads me to believe its neither CPU or GPU bottleneck.

From my understanding a CPU bottleneck would mean my CPU would have very high usage, but it doesn't.

I would appreciate if anyone can provide abit more insight on this for me?
 
Most games can't take advantage of 12 cores, let alone 8. And a lot of games still schedule work via a single primary thread to multiple workers. There's also the issue that gaming performance isn't quite the best on two CCD based Ryzens due to cross CCD latency.

Which games are you running and at which settings? And if you want to make sure your video card is performing as expected, run a GPU based benchmark like 3DMark and see if it's within what reviewers got.
 

Lutfij

Titan
Moderator
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Corsair 750w PSU. It is an old one but still meets my GPU manufacturer minimum power recomendations.
Corsair is the brand of the unit while 750W is the advertised wattage of the unit. What is the model of the unit and how old is the unit in question? Please be wary that an used PSU will not output the same amount of power as it did when brand new due to wear and tear.

What did the PSU power prior to your upgrade?
 
Mar 2, 2023
6
0
10
Most games can't take advantage of 12 cores, let alone 8. And a lot of games still schedule work via a single primary thread to multiple workers. There's also the issue that gaming performance isn't quite the best on two CCD based Ryzens due to cross CCD latency.

Which games are you running and at which settings? And if you want to make sure your video card is performing as expected, run a GPU based benchmark like 3DMark and see if it's within what reviewers got.

MSFS 2020, Sons of the forest, Escape from tarkov. I have tried other games but cant recall of the top of my head.
Some games like cyberpunk seem to push my gpu pretty hard and benchmarks always push the gpu to max load.

I always run my games at max settings.

I can test more games and report back if that helps? If you have any suggestions for games to test with, I may have them.

Thanks for the reply.
 
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Mar 2, 2023
6
0
10
Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Corsair 750w PSU. It is an old one but still meets my GPU manufacturer minimum power recomendations.
Corsair is the brand of the unit while 750W is the advertised wattage of the unit. What is the model of the unit and how old is the unit in question? Please be wary that an used PSU will not output the same amount of power as it did when brand new due to wear and tear.

What did the PSU power prior to your upgrade?
PSU is a CX750. I bought it around 7 years ago. This PSU has power a few different CPUs and GPUs over the years.
If benchmarks push my GPU to max load, could it still be this with some games?

Thank you.
 
MSFS 2020, Sons of the forest, Escape from tarkov. I have tried other games but cant recall of the top of my head.
Some games like cyberpunk seem to push my gpu pretty hard and benchmarks always push the gpu to max load.

I always run my games at max settings.

I can test more games and report back if that helps? If you have any suggestions for games to test with, I may have them.

Thanks for the reply.
I'd say run programs like 3DMark or Unigine Superposition. We need to isolate CPU performance from this to make sure the card can at least run full throttle.
 
Mar 2, 2023
6
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10
I'd say run programs like 3DMark or Unigine Superposition. We need to isolate CPU performance from this to make sure the card can at least run full throttle.
I have run these benchmarks and the GPU is quite happy running at 100% load on these.

It is just with alot of games, it feels like CPU bottleneck, but CPU load is equally as low as GPU load within HWInfo amd all temps are around 50 to 60c.
 
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I have run these benchmarks and the GPU is quite happy running at 100% load on these.

It is just with alot of games, it feels like CPU bottleneck, but CPU load is equally as low as GPU load within HWInfo amd all temps are around 50 to 60c.
Let's do another test, find reviews of the 5900X that tested it in gaming, preferably at 1080p or lower, such as https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-5900x-zen-3-review/5. Then run those same games and see if you get similar results. Your GPU should perform better than GPUs used at the time of review, so that shouldn't b a factor.

In any case, if you get similar results, there's nothing wrong with your system. The game just isn't designed to take advantage of it.
 
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Mar 2, 2023
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Let's do another test, find reviews of the 5900X that tested it in gaming, preferably at 1080p or lower, such as https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-5900x-zen-3-review/5. Then run those same games and see if you get similar results. Your GPU should perform better than GPUs used at the time of review, so that shouldn't b a factor.

In any case, if you get similar results, there's nothing wrong with your system. The game just isn't designed to take advantage of it.

OK thanks for taking the time to help.

I will do as you said but I do believe there will be something causing the issue as I have a friend new a complete new system and a 4070ti and he gets about 40% better fps with 98% GPU load.

What I'm trying to determine is if it is possible to be a CPU bottleneck if CPU load is equally as low as GPU load (around 60%), but most of the time CPU load is less than 50%.
 
What I'm trying to determine is if it is possible to be a CPU bottleneck if CPU load is equally as low as GPU load (around 60%), but most of the time CPU load is less than 50%.
Yes, it's possible. There's two scenarios where the CPU the bottleneck:
  • It's completely maxed out.
  • The software doesn't issue enough threads to saturate the CPU and those are maxing out the cores its on
I mentioned earlier that a lot of games still use a primary single thread to schedule work. So in effect, games still rely on single core performance to get by.